Gameday

The Minnesota Timberwolves will be facing the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday night at the Target Center. The game is a nationally televised game and if the last matchup between these two teams is a gage for how this one will go, we're all in for a great night of basketball.

If you'll recall the Wolves faced the Thunder in Oklahoma City back in March 2012 when the Thunder defeated the Wolves in double-overtime. This was a game that saw Kevin Love dump in 51 points (a franchise best), while Kevin Durant & Russell Westbrook added 40 apiece and Minnesota's J.J. Barea chipped in a triple-double! The Wolves ran out of gas and ended up losing, however if you remember that game, you remember who was on the court when it mattered: J.J. Barea, Luke Ridnour, Wayne Ellington, Anthony Tolliver and Kevin Love. Needless to say we're a bit better now, with a much improved roster and fourth quarter lineup.

I'm trying to make this quick as tipoff is just 30 minutes away. I apologize for not getting this up sooner, but as I said in a post earlier this week--the next few days leading up to Christmas day are absolutely hectic for me, I apologize again for my tardiness on TWolves news in advance!

Minnesota comes into this matchup 12-11 while the Oklahoma City Thunder are 21-4. A win tonight would solidify Minnesota's bid for are legitimate playoff team this season.

Ricky Rubio will play tonight after having Tuesday off (because he won't play in back-to-back games to start). It's sounding like he'll still have a cap on his minutes: 18 minutes or so. The Wolves also recently waived Josh Howard after news came that he tore his ACL in that game vs. the Hornets. We'll have more on that in a news post shortly, though.

That's all for now, tipoff is just 30 minutes away (6pmCT) and a full gameday recap will be available on this site following the final horn. Until then, thanks for reading HOWL and GO WOLVES!